Lee Sheng-Chiang, Peters Randall D
Department of Physics, Mercer University, Macon, Georgia 31207, USA.
Rev Sci Instrum. 2009 Apr;80(4):045109. doi: 10.1063/1.3123407.
With the advancement in nanotechnology, the ability of positioning/measuring at subnanometer scale has been one of the most critical issues for the nanofabrication industry and researchers using scanning probe microscopy. Commercial nanopositioners have achieved direct measurements at the scale of 0.01 nm with capacitive sensing metrology. However, the commercial sensors have small dynamic ranges (up to only a few hundred micrometers) and are relatively large in size (centimeters in the transverse directions to the motion), which is necessary for healthy signal detections but making it difficult to use on smaller devices. This limits applications in which large materials (on the scale of centimeters or greater) are handled with needs of subnanometer resolutions. What has been done in the past is to combine the fine and coarse translation stages with different dynamic ranges to simultaneously achieve long travel range and high spatial resolution. In this paper, we present a novel capacitive position sensing metrology with ultrawide dynamic range from subnanometer to literally any practically desired length for a translation stage. This sensor will greatly simplify the task and enhance the performance of direct metrology in a hybrid translational stage covering translation tasks from subnanometer to centimeters.
随着纳米技术的进步，在亚纳米尺度上进行定位/测量的能力一直是纳米制造行业以及使用扫描探针显微镜的研究人员面临的最关键问题之一。商业纳米定位器已通过电容传感计量实现了0.01纳米尺度的直接测量。然而，商业传感器的动态范围较小（仅高达几百微米），并且尺寸相对较大（在运动方向的横向为厘米级），这对于获得良好的信号检测是必要的，但使得其难以应用于较小的设备。这限制了在处理厘米级或更大尺寸材料时需要亚纳米分辨率的应用。过去所做的是将具有不同动态范围的精细和粗调平移台相结合，以同时实现长行程范围和高空间分辨率。在本文中，我们提出了一种新颖的电容式位置传感计量方法，其具有从亚纳米到实际所需的任何长度的超宽动态范围，适用于平移台。这种传感器将极大地简化任务，并提高在覆盖从亚纳米到厘米级平移任务的混合平移台中直接计量的性能。
